No “practicable” breastplates, hauberks, corslets, or any things of the kind have so far been discovered in graves of the Mycenaean prime. A corpse in Grave V. at Mycenae had, however, a golden breastplate, with oval bosses representing the nipples and with prettily interlaced spirals all over the remainder of the gold (Fig. 9). Another corpse had a plain gold breastplate with the nipples indicated. 159 These decorative corslets of gold were probably funereal symbols of practicable breastplates of bronze, but no such pieces of armour are worn by the fighting-men on the gems and other works of art of Mycenae, and none are found in Mycenaean graves. But does this prove anything? Leg-guards, broad metal bands clasping the leg below the knee, are found in the Mycenaean shaft graves, but are never represented in Mycenaean art. 160 Meanwhile, bronze corslets are very frequently mentioned in the “rarely alluded to,” says Mr. Leaf, 161 but this must be a slip of the pen. Connected with the breastplate or thorex ([Greek: thoraex]) is the verb [Greek: thoraesso, thoraessethai], which means “to arm,” or “equip” in general.
The Achaeans are constantly styled in the Iliad and in the Odyssey “chalkochitones,” “with bronze chitons.” epics have therefore boldly argued that by “bronze chitons” the poet pleasantly alludes to shields. But as the Mycenaeans seem scarcely to have worn any chitons in battle, as far as we are aware from their art, and are not known to have had any bronze shields, the argument evaporates, as Mr. Ridgeway has pointed out. Nothing can be less like a chiton or smock, loose or tight, than either the double-bellied huge shield, the tower-shaped cylindrical shield, or the flat, doorlike shield, covering body and legs in Mycenaean art. “The bronze chiton,” says Helbig, “is only a poetic phrase for the corslet.”
Reichel and Mr. Leaf, however, think that “bronze chitoned” is probably “a picturesque expression . . . and refers to the bronze-covered shield.” 162 The breastplate covered the upper part of the chiton, and so might be called a “bronze chiton,” above all, if it had been evolved, as corselets usually have been, out of a real chiton, interwoven with small plates or rings of bronze. The process of evolution might be from a padded linen chiton ([Greek: linothooraes]) worn by Teucer, and on the Trojan side by Amphius (as by nervous Protestants during Oates’s “Popish Plot”), to a leathern chiton, strengthened by rings, or studs, or scales of bronze, and thence to plates. 163 Here, in this armoured chiton, would be an object that a poet might readily call “a chiton of bronze.” But that, if he lived in the Mycenaean age, when, so far as art shows, chitons were not worn at all, or very little, and scarcely ever in battle, and when we know nothing of bronze-plating on shields, the poet should constantly call a monstrous double-bellied leather shield, or any other Mycemean type of shield, “a bronze chiton,” seems almost unthinkable. “A leather cloak” would be a better term for such shields, if cloaks were in fashion.
According to Mr. Myres (1899) the “stock line” in the Iliad, about piercing a [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] or corslet, was inserted “to satisfy the practical criticisms of a corslet-wearing age,” the age of the later poets, the Age of Iron. But why did not such practical critics object to the constant presence in the poems of bronze weapons, in their age out of date, if they objected to the absence from the poems of the corslets with which they were familiar? Mr. Myres supposes that the line about the [Greek: poludaidalos] corslet was already old, but had merely meant “many-glittering body clothing”— garments set with the golden discs and other ornaments found in Mycemean graves. The bronze corslet, he says, would not be “many glittering,” but would reflect “a single star of light.” 164 Now, first, even if the star were a single star, it would be as “many glittering” when the warrior was in rapid and changeful motion as the star that danced when Beatrix was born. Secondly, if the contemporary corslets of the Iron Age were not “many glittering,” practical corslet-wearing critics would ask the poet, “why do you call corslets ‘many glittering’?” Thirdly, [Greek: poludaidalos] may surely be translated “a thing of much art,” and Greek corslets were incised with ornamental designs. Thus Messrs. Hogarth and Bosanquet report “a very remarkable ‘Mycemean’ bronze breastplate” from Crete, which “shows four female draped figures, the two central ones holding a wreath over a bird, below which is a sacred tree. The two outer figures are apparently dancing. It is probably a ritual scene, and may help to elucidate the nature of early AEgean cults.” 165 Here, [Greek: poludaidalos]— if that word means “artistically wrought.” Helbig thinks the Epics silent about the gold spangles on dresses. 166
Mr. Myres applauds Reichel’s theory that thorex first meant a man’s chest. If thorex means a man’s breast, then thorex in a secondary sense, one thinks, would mean “breastplate,” as waist of a woman means, first, her waist; next, her blouse (American). But Mr. Myres and Reichel say that the secondary sense of thorex is not breastplate but “body clothing,” as if a man were all breast, or wore only a breast covering, whereas Mycenaean art shows men wearing nothing on their breasts, merely drawers or loin-cloths, which could not be called thorex, as they cover the antipodes of the breast.
The verb [Greek: thoraesestai], the theory runs on, merely meant “to put on body clothing,” which Mycenaeans in works of art, if correctly represented, do not usually put on; they fought naked or in bathing drawers. Surely we might as well argue that a “waistcoat” might come to mean “body clothing in general,” as that a word for the male breast became, first, a synonym for the covering of the male buttocks and for apparel in general, and, next, for a bronze breastplate. These arguments appear rather unconvincing, 167 nor does Mycenaean art instruct us that men went into battle dressed in body clothing which was thickly set with many glittering gold ornaments, and was called “a many-glittering thorex.”
Further, if we follow Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the Mycenaeans wore chitons and called them chitons. They also used bronze-plated shields, though of this we have no evidence. Taking the bronze-plated (?) shield to stand poetically for the chiton, the poet spoke of “the bronze-chitoned Achaeans” But, if we follow Mr. Myres, the Mycenaeans also applied the word thorex to body clothing at large, in place of the word chiton; and when a warrior was transfixed by a spear, they said that his “many-glittering, gold-studded thorex,” that is, his body clothing in general, was pierced. It does seem simpler to hold that chiton meant chiton; that thorex meant, first, “breast,” then “breastplate,” whether of linen, or plaited leather, or bronze, and that to pierce a man through his [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] meant to pierce him through his handsome corslet. No mortal ever dreamt that this was so till Reichel tried to make out that the original poet describes no armour except the large Mycenaean shield and the mitrê, and that all corslets in the poems were of much later introduction. Possibly they were, but they had plenty of time wherein to be evolved long before the eighth century, Reichel’s date for corslets.
The argument is that a man with a large shield needs no body armour, or uses the shield because he has no body armour.
But the possession and use of a large shield did not in the Middle Ages, or among the Iroquois and Algonquins, make men dispense with corslets, even when the shield was worn, as in Homer, slung round the neck by a telamon (guige in Old French), belt, or baldric.
We turn to a French Chanson de Geste — La Chancun de Willem — of the twelfth century A.D., to judge by the handwriting. One of the heroes, Girard, having failed to rescue Vivien in battle, throws down his weapons and armour, blaming each piece for having failed him. Down goes the heavy lance; down goes the ponderous shield, suspended by a telamon: “Ohitarge grant cume peises al col!” down goes the plated byrnie, “Ohi grant broine cum me vas apesant” 168
The mediaeval warrior has a heavy byrnie as well as a great shield suspended from his neck. It will be remarked also that the Algonquins and Iroquois of the beginning of the seventeenth century, as described by Champlain, give us the whole line of Mycenaean evolution of armour up to a certain point. Not only had they arrow-proof, body-covering shields of buffalo hide, but, when Champlain used his arquebus against the Iroquois in battle, “they were struck amazed that two of their number should have been killed so promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of armour, woven of cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields.” We have already alluded to this passage, but must add that Parkman, describing from French archives a battle of Illinois against Iroquois in 1680, speaks of “corslets of tough twigs interwoven with cordage.” 169 Golden, in his Five Nations, writes of the Red Indians as wearing “a kind of cuirass made of pieces of wood joined together.” 170
To the kindness of Mr. Hill Tout I also owe a description of the armour of the Indian tribes of north-west America, from a work of his own. He says: “For protective purposes in warfare they employed shields and coat-armour. The shields varied in form and material from tribe to tribe. Among the Interior Salish they were commonly made of wood, which was afterwards covered with hide. Sometimes they consisted of several thicknesses of hide only. The hides most commonly used were those of the elk, buffalo, or bear. After the advent of the Hudson’s Bay Co. some of the Indians used to beat out the large copper kettles they obtained from the traders and make polished circular shields of these. In some centres long rectangular shields, made from a single or double hide, were employed. These were often from 4 to 5 feet in length and from 3 to 4 feet in width — large enough to cover the whole body. Among the Déné tribes (Sikanis) the shield was generally made of closely-woven wicker-work, and was of an ovaloid form (exact size not given).
“The coat armour was everywhere used, and varied in form and style in almost every centre. There were two ways in which this was most commonly made. One of these was the slatted cuirass or corslet, which was formed of a series of narrow slats of wood set side by side vertically and fastened in place by interfacings of raw hide. It went all round the body, being hung from the shoulders with straps. The other was a kind of shirt of double or treble elk hide, fastened at the side with thongs. Another kind of armour, less common than that just described, was the long elk-hide tunic, which reached to and even below the knees and was sleeved to the elbow.“
Mr. Hill Tout’s minute description, with the other facts cited, leaves no doubt that even in an early stage, as in later stages of culture, the use of the great shield does not exclude the use of such body armour as the means of the warriors enable them to construct. To take another instance, Pausanias describes the corslets of the neolithic Sarmatae, which he saw dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens. Corslets these bowmen and users of the lasso possessed, though they did not use the metals. They fashioned very elegant corslets out of horses’ hoofs, cutting them into scales like those of a pine cone, and sewing them on to cloth. 171
Certain small, thin, perforated discs of stone found in Scotland have been ingeniously explained as plates to be strung together on a garment of cloth, a neolithic chiton. However this may be, since Iroquois and Algonquins and Déné had some sort of woven, or plaited, or wooden, or buff corslet, in addition to their great shields, we may suppose that the Achaeans would not be less inventive. They would pass from the [Greek: linothoraex] (answering to the cotton corslet of the Iroquois) to a sort of jack or jaseran with rings, scales, or plates, and thence to bronze-plate corslets, represented only by the golden breastplates of the Mycenaean grave. Even if the Mycenaeans did not evolve the corslet, there is no reason why, in the Homeric times, it should not have been evolved.
For linen corslets, such as Homer mentions, in actual use and represented in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on The Armour of Homeric Heroes.’ He finds Memnon in a white corslet, on a black-figured vase in the British Museum. There is another white corsleted 172 Memnon figured in the Vases Peints of the Duc de Luynes (plate xii.). Mr. Leaf suggests that the white colour represents “a corslet not of metal but of linen,” and cites Iliad, II. 529, 5 30. “Xenophon mentions linen corslets as being worn by the Chalybes” (Anabasis, iv. 15). Two linen corslets, sent from Egypt to Sparta by King Amasis, are recorded by Herodotus (ii. 182; iii. 47). The corslets were of linen, embroidered in cotton and gold. Such a piece of armour or attire might easily develop into the [Greek: streptos chitoon] of Iliad, V. 113, in which Aristarchus appears to have recognised chain or scale armour; but we find no such object represented in Mycenaean art, which, of course, does not depict Homeric armour or costume, and it seems probable that the bronze corslets mentioned by Homer were plate armour. The linen corslet lasted into the early sixth century B.C. In the poem called Stasiotica, Alcaeus (No. 5) speaks of his helmets, bronze greaves and corslets of linen ([Choorakes te neoi linoo]) as a defence against arrows.
Meanwhile a “bronze chiton” or corslet would turn spent arrows and spent spears, and be very useful to a warrior whose shield left him exposed to shafts shot or spears thrown from a distance. Again, such a bronze chiton might stop a spear of which the impetus was spent in penetrating the shield. But Homeric corslets did not, as a rule, avail to keep out a spear driven by the hand at close quarters, or powerfully thrown from a short distance. Even the later Greek corslets do not look as if they could resist a heavy spear wielded by a strong hand.
I proceed to show that the Homeric corslet did not avail against a spear at close quarters, but could turn an arrow point (once), and could sometimes turn a spear which had perforated a shield. So far, and not further, the Homeric corslet was serviceable. But if a warrior’s breast or back was not covered by the shield, and received a thrust at close quarters, the corslet was pierced more easily than the pad of paper which was said to have been used as secret armour in a duel by the Master of Sinclair (1708). 173 It is desirable to prove this feebleness of the corslet, because the poet often says that a man was smitten with the spear in breast or back when unprotected by the shield, without mentioning the corslet, whence it is argued by the critics that corslets were not worn when the original lays were fashioned, and that they have only been sporadically introduced, in an after age when the corslet was universal, by “modernising” later rhapsodists aiming at the up-to-date.
A weak point is the argument that Homer says back or breast was pierced, without mentioning the corslet, whence it follows that he knew no corslets. Quintus Smyrnaeus does the same thing. Of course, Quintus knew all about corslets, yet (Book I. 248, 256, 257) he makes his heroes drive spear or sword through breast or belly without mentioning the resistance of the corslet, even when (I. 144, 594) he has assured us that the victim was wearing a corslet. These facts are not due to inconsistent interpolation of corslets into the work of this post-Christian poet Quintus. 174
Corslets, in Homer, are flimsy; that of Lycaon, worn by Paris, is pierced by a spear which has also perforated his shield, though the spear came only from the weak hand of Menelaus (Iliad, III. 357, 358). The arrow of Pandarus whistles through the corslet of Menelaus (IV. 136). The same archer pierces with an arrow the corslet of Diomede (V. 99, 100). The corslet of Diomede, however, avails to stop a spear which has traversed his shield (V. 281). The spear of Idomeneus pierces the corslet of Othryoneus, and the spear of Antilochus perforates the corslet of a charioteer (XIII. 371, 397). A few lines later Diomede’s spear reaches the midriff of Hypsenor. No corslet is here mentioned, but neither is the shield mentioned (this constantly occurs), and we cannot argue that Hypsenor wore no corslet, unless we are also to contend that he wore no shield, or a small shield. Idomeneus drives his spear through the “bronze chiton” of Alcath?us (XIII. 439, 440). Mr. Leaf reckons these lines “probably an interpolation to turn the linen chiton, the rending of which is the sign of triumph, into a bronze corslet.” But we ask why, if an editor or rhapsodist went through the Iliad introducing corslets, he so often left them out, where the critics detect their absence because they are not mentioned?
The spear of Idomeneus pierces another feeble corslet over the victim’s belly (XIII. 506–508). It is quite a surprise when a corslet does for once avail to turn an arrow (XIII. 586–587). But Aias drives his spear through the corslet of Phorcys, into his belly (XVII 311–312). Thus the corslet scarcely ever, by itself, protects a hero; it never protects him against an unspent spear; even when his shield stands between his corslet and the spear both are sometimes perforated. Yet occasionally the corslet saves a man when the spear has gone through the shield. The poet, therefore, sometimes gives us a man pierced in a part which the corslet covers, without mentioning the flimsy article that could not keep out a spear.
Reichel himself came to see, before his regretted death, that he could not explain away the thorex or corslet, on his original lines, as a mere general name for “a piece of armour”; and he inclined to think that jacks, with metal plates sewn on, did exist before the Ionian corslet. 175 The gold breastplates of the Mycenaean graves pointed in this direction. But his general argument is that corslets were interpolated into the old lays by poets of a corslet-wearing age; and Mr. Leaf holds that corslets may have filtered in, “during the course of successive modernisation, such as the oldest parts of the Iliad seem in many cases to have passed through,” 176 though the new poets were, for all that, “conservatively tenacious of the old material.” We have already pointed out the difficulty.
The poets who did not introduce the new small bucklers with which they were familiar, did stuff the Iliad full of corslets unknown, by the theory, to the original poet, but familiar to rhapsodists living centuries later. Why, if they were bent on modernising, did they not modernise the shields? and how, if they modernised unconsciously, as all uncritical poets do, did the shield fail to be unconsciously “brought up to date”? It seems probable that Homer lived at a period when both huge shield and rather feeble corslet were in vogue.
We shall now examine some of the passages in which Mr. Leaf, mainly following Reichel, raises difficulties about corslets. We do not know their mechanism; they were composed of [Greek: guala], presumed to be a backplate and a breastplate. The word gualon appears to mean a hollow, or the converse, something convex. We cannot understand the mechanism (see a young man putting on a corslet, on an amphora by Euthymides. Walter, vol. ii. p. 176); but, if late poets, familiar with such corslets, did not understand how they worked, they were very dull men. When their descriptions puzzle us, that is more probably because we are not at the point of view than because poets interpolated mentions of pieces of armour which they did not understand, and therefore cannot have been familiar with, and, in that case, would not introduce.
Mr. Leaf starts with a passage in the Iliad (III. 357–360) — it recurs in another case: “Through the bright shield went the ponderous spear, and through the inwrought” (very artfully wrought), [Greek: poludaidalou] “breastplate it pressed on, and straight beside his flank it rent the tunic, but he swerved and escaped black death.” Mr. Leaf says, “It is obvious that, after a spear has passed through a breastplate, there is no longer any possibility for the wearer to bend aside and so to avoid the point. . . . ” But I suppose that the wearer, by a motion very natural, doubled up sideways, so to speak, and so the spear merely grazed his flesh. That is what I suppose the poet to intend. The more he knew of corslets, the less would he mention an impossible circumstance in connection with a corslet.
Again, in many cases the late poets, by the theory — though it is they who bring the corslets in-leave the corslets out! A man without shield, helmet, and spear calls himself “naked.” Why did not these late poets, it is asked, make him take off his corslet, if he had one, as well as his shield? The case occurs in XXII. 111–113,124–125. Hector thinks of laying aside helmet, spear, and shield, and of parleying with Achilles. “But then he will slay me naked,” that is, unarmed. “He still had his corslet,” the critics say, “so how could he be naked? or, if he had no corslet, this is a passage uncontaminated by the late poets of the corslet age.” Now certainly Hector was wearing a corslet, which he had taken from Patroclus: that is the essence of the story. He would, however, be “naked” or unprotected if he laid aside helmet, spear, and shield, because Achilles could hit him in the head or neck (as he did), or lightly drive the spear through the corslet, which, we have proved, was no sound defence against a spear at close quarters, though useful against chance arrows, and occasionally against spears spent by traversing the shield.
We next learn that no corslet occurs in the Odyssey, or in Iliad, Book X., called “very late”: Mr. Leaf suggests that it is of the seventh century B.C. But if the Odyssey and Iliad, Book X., are really very late, their authors and interpolators were perfectly familiar with Ionian corslets. Why did they leave corslets out, while their predecessors and contemporaries were introducing them all up and down the Iliad? In fact, in Book X, no prince is regularly equipped; they have been called up to deliberate in the dead of night, and when two go as spies they wear casual borrowed gear. It is more important that no corslet is mentioned in Nestor’s arms in his tent. But are we to explain this, and the absence of mention of corslets in the Odyssey (where there is little about regular fighting), on the ground that the author of Iliad, Book X., and all the many authors and editors of the Odyssey happened to be profound archaeologists, and, unlike their contemporaries, the later poets and interpolators of the Iliad, had formed the theory that corslets were not known at the time of the siege of Troy and therefore must not be mentioned? This is quite incredible. No hypothesis can be more improbable. We cannot imagine late Ionian rhapsodists listening to the Iliad, and saying, “These poets of the Iliad are all wrong: at the date of the Mycenaean prime, as every educated man knows, corslets were not yet in fashion. So we must have no corslets in the Odyssey?”
A modern critic, who thinks this possible, is bringing the practice of archaising poets of the late nineteenth century into the minds of rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ. Artists of the middle of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d’Arc in the armour and costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule. Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the Mycenaean prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in Asia, that corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the other side of the sea.
We are told that Aias and some other heroes are never spoken of as wearing corslets. But Aias certainly did put on a set of pieces of armour, and did not trust to his shield alone, tower-like as it was. The description runs thus: The Achaeans have disarmed, before the duel of Aias and Hector. Aias draws the lucky lot; he is to ‘meet Hector, and bids the others pray to Zeus “while I clothe me in my armour of battle.” While they prayed, Aias “arrayed himself in flashing bronze. And when he had now clothed upon his flesh all his pieces of armour” ([Greek: panta teuchae]) “he went forth to fight.” If Aias wore only a shield, as on Mr. Leaf’s hypothesis, he could sling it on before the Achaeans could breathe a pater noster. His sword he would not have taken off; swords were always worn. What, then, are “all his pieces of armour”? (VII. 193, 206).
Carl Robert cites passages in which the [Greek: teuchea], taken from the shoulders, include corslets, and are late and Ionian, with other passages which are Mycenaean, with no corslet involved. He adds about twenty more passages in which [Greek: teuchea] include corslets. Among these references two are from the Doloneia (X. 254, 272), where Reichel finds no mention of corslets. How Robert can tell [Greek: teuchea], which mean corslets, from [Greek: teuchea], which exclude corslets, is not obvious. But, at all events, he does see corslets, as in VII. 122, where Reichel sees none, 177 and he is obviously right.
It is a strong point with Mr. Leaf that “we never hear of the corslet in the case of Aias. . . . ” 178 Robert, however, like ourselves, detects the corslet among “al the [Greek: teuchea]” which Aias puts on for his duel with Hector (Iliad, VII. 193, 206–207).
In the same Book (VII. 101–103, 122) the same difficulty occurs. Menelaus offers to fight Hector, and says, “I will put on my harness” [Greek: thooraxomai], and does “put on his fair pieces of armour” [Greek: teuchea kala], Agamemnon forbids him to fight, and his friends “joyfully take his pieces of armour” [Greek: teuchea] “from his shoulders” (Iliad, VII. 206–207). They take off pieces of armour, in the plural, and a shield cannot be spoken of in the plural; while the sword would not be taken off — it was worn even in peaceful costume.
Idomeneus is never named as wearing a corslet, but he remarks that he has plenty of corslets (XIII. 264); and in this and many cases opponents of co............